1. Field
One or more embodiments of the present invention relate to a reconfigurable processor and a method of operating the reconfigurable processor.
2. Description of the Related Art
A reconfigurable architecture is an architecture that enables a hardware configuration of a computing device to be changed to be optimized for conditions of a specific task so as to perform the specific task.
If the specific task is performed using only fixed hardware of the computing device, when details of the specific task are slightly changed, it is difficult to efficiently handle the changed details due to fixed functions of the fixed hardware. If the specific task is performed using only software, the specific task can be performed according to the changed details of the specific task by changing operations of the software but the speed of performing the task may be lower than when the hardware is used.
The reconfigurable architecture may be designed to satisfy both usefulness of hardware and usefulness of software. In particular, much attention has been paid to such as a reconfigurable architecture in the field of digital signal processing (DSP) in which the same specific task is repeatedly performed.
There are many types of reconfigurable architecture. A coarse-grained array (CGA) is a representative example of the reconfigurable architecture. A reconfigurable architecture that enables some of the CGA to be used as a very long instruction word (VLIW) machine has been recently introduced.
A reconfigurable architecture may have two execution modes: a CGA mode and a VLIW mode. In general, in a reconfigurable architecture having the CGA mode and the VLIW mode, loop operations may be performed in the CGA mode and other general operations may be performed in the VLIW mode.